


brother return to me

by Mayarene Rose (Paradise_of_Mary_Jane)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, not Endgame compliant in any way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:15:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21574354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradise_of_Mary_Jane/pseuds/Mayarene%20Rose
Summary: “You look like you could use some help, brother.”Thor whirls around, mid-battle, breath caught in his throat. He grips Stormbreaker and stares. Just stares. Everything else seems to have dissolved into an incoherent roaring and all he can see is the green clad figure standing right in front of him like the past few days never happened.Loki just looks back, hands spread, an expectant expression on his face.Right as the final battle is about to end, Loki returns. Thor is too stunned to do anything.
Relationships: Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 119





	brother return to me

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in April 2018 and promptly forgot about its existence. So, when I say that this is not Endgame compliant at all, I mean it is not Endgame compliant at all. I'm not even sure a trailer was released yet when I wrote this. But, also I'm too lazy to actually edit it to be more canon compliant ~~also I just really like Tony being alive, okay?~~ It doesn't really make that much of a difference, but I just thought I'd let you know.
> 
> Anyway, I recently found it buried in my documents, so might as well post it now. Enjoy!

“You look like you could use some help, brother.”

Thor whirls around, mid-battle, breath caught in his throat. He grips Stormbreaker and stares. Just stares. Everything else seems to have dissolved into an incoherent roaring and all he can see is the green clad figure standing right in front of him like the past few days never happened.

Loki just looks back, hands spread, an expectant expression on his face.

“Well?” Loki asks, tilting his head, and raising an eyebrow. He sounds annoyed too, like he thinks Thor is being an idiot again. Loki usually sounds that way around Thor. Thor doesn’t know if he wants to feel annoyed, furious, ecstatic, or if he should simply sob in relief. Perhaps a combination of all of the above. It all feels very surreal. “Isn’t there a battle we need to be getting to?”

Thor looks at Loki, alive and hale, and only feels an exhausted kind of relief. They’re on Earth fighting the hoards of Thanos. Loki is alive despite having died in front of Thor for the third time. His clothes are singed, cape torn, but he’s alive. He’s _healthy and alive._

“I’m starting to think you can’t actually die, brother,” Thor says. He means to say, _how are you alive?_ He means to say, _was that another one of your tricks?_

_Is there no end to your cruelties?_

He means to say, _are you real, brother?_

Loki shrugs, giving him a half-smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “You’re not that far off the mark,” he says, and there’s a lot of questions with that answer, but Loki holds a hand up and nods towards the hoard of Thanos’ creatures charging right at them. He’s holding his daggers in his hands. He’s steady on his feet and the fire of battle is burning in his eyes.

“Catch up later?” Thor says. He raises Stormbreaker, testing his grip, still unsure of the weight and power of it in his hand.

“We’ll see,” Loki says, lips pursued, but his eyes say yes. Thor takes it. Half the universe is gone but his brother is alive for the second time. It’s the little things like that.

“Try not to die again,” he says and hopes that Loki hears the _I’m glad you’re alive,_ at the end.

\--

The battle ends. They manage to restore the half of the population of the universe that Thanos killed, more or less. The Avengers come out mostly unscathed. It’s a good ending, all things considered. 

A worthy ending.

And after all of it, Loki is, miraculously, still alive. Mostly intact and _alive and still on Earth._ He hasn‘t run, hasn’t disappeared like some phantom. Thor is still under the impression that this is some fever-dream and he never left the Sakaaran ship with the bodies of his people.

He places an arm around Loki’s shoulder, thin and bony, to assure himself that his brother is real. Loki stiffens but doesn’t pull away. He looks less well than Thor would like, covered in blood, and stinking of sweat and battle, but still alive. Still alive.

“We’re getting a drink,” Thor decides. Loki turns to him with a raised eyebrow. Around them, Earth is a mangled mess. But humans are a resilient bunch. And if there’s something Thor has learned from all his years on this planet, it’s that they really care about making money and drinking alcohol. Thor is sure they can find something.

“Midgardian alcohol is worse than water,” says Loki. 

Thor grips his shoulder tighter. “Then I suppose we’ll have to find a lot of it.”

\--

The two of them ended up draining three bars worth of alcohol before feeling the faint buzz of drunkenness. The humans are more than happy to let them, after saving half the life in the universe and all that. It’s on their fifth bar when Loki finally begins to speak.

“I don’t know how it happens,” he tells Thor. “I thought on Svartelheim… I thought it might have been something Thanos did to me, but on the ship he said… Clearly, it wasn’t him.”

“Something Thanos did?” Thor says, gripping his mug of beer tight. “What did he do to you, brother?”

Thanos is dead but Thor would very much like to kill him a million times over for all he’s done.

Loki’s lips press into a thin line. “Well, not Thanos personally. He wouldn’t have time for something like me. But his children did a great many things to me. They weren’t exactly welcoming.”

Thor thinks about that. Thinks about what might have happened to his brother in-between falling and turning into the hate filled creature that tried to conquer Earth. Then, he decides not to. Better for his state of mind not to dwell on painful things he cannot change. Loki will speak of his pain on his own terms or not at all. That has always been his way. 

“So on Svartelheim, you really…”

A sharp nod, followed by a breath that might have been a laugh if it didn’t sound so much like a sob. “I certainly thought so. I welcomed it,” Loki says, and Thor’s heart stops in his chest. “It was a good death. Probably the best I could have gotten, given the circumstances. I wasn’t about to let it go.”

“There is no such thing as a good death,” Thor says fiercely. There was nothing good about holding Loki’s cooling form in his arms. Nothing good about watching his skin turn an ashen grey as his entire body tremble with pain. Definitely nothing good about watching his brother try to gasp out his last words and apologizing for dying.

Perhaps the mead is getting to him more than he thought. 

Loki glances at him, raising an eyebrow. It would look condescending to anyone else. To Thor, it looks uncertain. “What an absolutely blasphemous thing for an Aesir to say. Midgard truly has changed you.”

It occurs to Thor, very suddenly, that as much as he thinks of Loki as someone he doesn’t know anymore, that perhaps his brother doesn’t know him very well now, either. He remembers Loki’s crazed eyes just before he fell, speaking to Thor of glory and war and death. It occurs to Thor that it’s only very recently he stopped seeking those things out for himself. Loki is right. It is not the Aesir way. All of them long for a glorious death lest they be barred from Valhalla. Death as death and the end is a human concept.

Thor remembers a Loki who didn’t care for such things. He remembers a younger version of himself who cared too much. They’re quite unrecognizable from the people they were from a mere few years ago, really.

“It’s a remarkable planet,” he says. Strange. Unique. Unstoppable. And debuted on the Intergalatic scene in what is probably the most ridiculously dramatic way possible. Most planets either had to be conquered or were conquered by other planets to be known. Humans, in their fascinatingly absurd way, had to go and save the entire universe from the Mad Titan.

“It’s certainly interesting.”

A beat passes in comfortable silence. It reminds Thor of better times. Endless days on Asgard when it was still real and golden and eternal. It’s a bittersweet memory. 

Loki seems as intent as Thor in getting himself shamefully drunk, with the way he has been draining the mead from each bar they go through. Maybe for similar reasons or maybe for something completely different. Perhaps they should have gone to another planet for this conversation. One with better alcohol.

Then Thor says, “You don’t still feel that way do you? About dying?”

Loki fingers his glass of half-empty mead. He stares intently into it, like it can give him answers to Thor’s question. “Ask me again in the morning,” he says, and downs the entire glass.

Thor raises an eyebrow, feeling his stomach turn to metal.

“So you can lie to me?” he asks.

Loki doesn’t even hesitate when he says, “yes.”

“Loki…” He sounds angry. Thor still can’t quite convey that he actually means scared. 

“It’s not as if it’s going to be a problem,” Loki says casually. “With past events and all that.”

Thor wants to scream. Wants to tear his hair out. Wants to cry. Wants to shake Loki. Wants to beg. He lets out a shuddering breath, struggling to control himself. “You’ve always been careless with your life, even when we were children,” he says. “I never cared for it.”

“Oh, and if the mighty Thor doesn’t care for something--”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Thor snaps.

Loki sighs. “I know.”

Thor nods and looks away. Another silence, this one not as comfortable. Against his will, he thinks of Loki, alone and wounded on Svartelheim. His pain had been real, Thor thinks, because not even Loki could fake that kind of pain. The way he trembled down to his bones, the tears in his eyes, the waver in his voice, those things were real. Thor had left him behind. He thinks of Loki, floating through space without a thing to hold onto for the second time. He wonders how Loki got to Earth. If someone had saved him or if he had to figure it out on his own.

Alcohol, Thor thinks as he downs an entire glass in one long gulp. He needs more alcohol.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Loki says.

Perhaps. But that would mean Loki would have kept more to himself and Thor already knows how that goes.

“You carry too much pain, brother. It might do you good to share it.”

Loki doesn’t answer. Thor doesn’t think he will. Not yet. Not anytime soon.

No matter. They have time yet. Thor will make sure of it.

\--

It takes seven more bars to get them well and truly drunk. When Loki begins turning tables into bears and cups into snakes, Thor’s drunken mind thinks that perhaps it’s time to call it a night. It takes him a while to remember why. Another to figure out how to get them out of there.

The fact that he can access the Bifrost easily still takes some getting used to. They don’t end up on Sakaar, which is a good thing, especially with how much Loki squirmed on the way.

The Avengers facility is still mostly intact. Or at least intact enough to sleep in. Thor doesn’t really care. He dumps Loki on a bed and climbs onto it. He puts a hand on his brother’s chest to make sure that it’s still beating. 

He falls asleep to that.

\--

“Please tell me you’re not here to take over Earth again. Just _please._ I can’t deal with two world ending events in four days days.”

“Witty as ever, Stark.”

Thor cracks an eye open and immediately regrets it. His head feels like it’s being stabbed by Korg’s sword. Multiple times. 

He sees Loki and Tony glaring at each other. Loki’s hair is disheveled and there are enough dark bags under his eyes that Thor knows his head must hurt just as much as Thor’s, if not more. Stark is rubbing at his temple the way he does when he’s confronted with a more complicated than usual problem.

They’re in Tony’s room, which is strange. Thor is almost certain that they collapsed in his quarters the night before. But perhaps he’s not the most reliable in that regard, especially when he’s a drunk god who hasn’t been on Earth for the past two years.

Thor groans. “Stark,” he says. “Leave my brother alone.”

Tony turns his glare to Thor. “You told me this guy’s dead,” he says accusingly. “You definitely told me he was dead.”

“I was,” says Loki. “Twice over actually. It never seems to stick.”

Thor hears the ‘unfortunately’ at the end, although that may just be him.

“And you’re here to what, exactly?”

Loki doesn’t answer. Thor thinks this might be the time he should be interfering. It takes more time to actually execute the plan. Or to actually come up with a plan.

“Well?” Stark demands.

“Just passing through,” Loki says coolly.

“Seriously if you’re here to take over the planet--”

“I have no care for pathetic Midgardian--”

“Brother,” Thor says sharply. 

Loki sucks in a sharp breath and turns his glare towards Thor. There’s fury there, but also betrayal. Thor feels wretched and confused and he doesn’t know how much of that he can blame on the hangover.

“I know when I’m not welcome. I’m leaving now,” Loki says and… Does just that. Disappears into thin air. Thor hadn’t seen Loki disappear like that in a long time. He hasn’t really seen Loki use magic that wasn’t an illusion in a long time. Thor groans and rolls over in bed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

There’s a few minutes of blessed silence. Then Tony speaks.

“I just ruined a family reunion thing, didn’t I?” he says.

Thor closes his eyes, wills the dark of his unconsciousness to swallow him whole. “A bit, yeah.”

Tony is silent again. Thor can imagine the look on his face: uncomfortable and confused and thinking a thousand thoughts a second. He’s a good man. Sharp-tongued and rarely truly thinks things through, but a good man. A lot like Loki, if Thor lets himself think about it hard enough.

“Sorry,” he says after a beat. He does not sound like he means it.

“It’s fine,” Thor reassures him. “He’ll be back. He always comes back.”

\--

Loki does come back. It takes him a week, but he does comes back on seventh day at sunset. He finds Thor on the roof of the Avengers facility. The others were out doing reparations. Thor could have joined them, probably should have, but he feels that he’s entitled to sit and watch at least one sunset. 

It’s not like he’ll ever see an Asgardian sunset ever again. It’s better that he gets used to Midgardian ones now.

Thor is getting maudlin. He’s entirely against the idea.

“Are you here to stay this time?” Thor asks. He doesn’t look, but feels Loki’s presence settle beside him. The air always seems to shift around Loki, like he’s changing reality and crafting illusions in little ways without conscious thought. It makes him easy to find, as long as you know what you’re looking for.

Or maybe that’s just Thor. He’s never had trouble finding Loki. 

Loki shrugs, a small, aborted motion. “I think we can both agree that Earth is not the best place for me to stay.”

Thor bites back the automatic protestations climbing up his throat. His brother isn’t exactly wrong, no matter how willing Thor is to pretend otherwise.

“Where will you go?” he asks instead.

“I don’t know,” Loki says. “I thought I’d wander again. Like when I was younger.”

Thor tries not to let it sting as much as it should. He should have expected it. It was probably Loki’s plan on the Asgardian ship as well, once things had settled down. Loki had a habit of roaming the universe and doing mad things on his own. He probably has the best map of the entire universe, the best knowledge of its deepest crevices. He’d disappear for weeks, sometimes months or years at a time without a warning. Settling had never been his brother’s way. 

It’s not abandonment, Thor tells himself firmly. It’s simply the way his brother is.

“Will you try to stop me?” Loki asks, glancing at him. Wary. Thor wonders what that means. He wonders what he can do to fix it.

“I’ve never been able to stop you from doing anything,” Thor says. “All I ask is you return from time to time.”

“Perhaps I’ll look for Valkyrie,” Loki says. “Lead the remaining Asgardians here.”

Thor smiles and, for a moment, he and his brother just watch the sunset. The Earth’s sun shines a brighter orange, casting golden light across the tree lined grounds of the Avengers facility. It almost seems idyllic.

“Swear that you’ll return with them,” he says.

A pause. Thor pictures a grin being plastered on his brother’s face. “I cannot possibly predict the future, brother.”

“Loki.”

“Many things might happen. I’ll try my best, of course, but--”

“Loki.”

“But I can make no promises.” Loki says this quietly. Thor imagines his brother’s face now: turned away, staring ahead, expression blank. He wishes he had the strength to look, see how Earth’s golden sunset paints his brother’s face and commit the image to memory. He wants to commit every image of his brother to mind, but he’s scared to look. Scared to turn and find that Loki has disappeared again.

“You said you would be here for me.” It’s hard to keep the accusation out of his voice.

“Things have changed, brother,” Loki says.

“Which means you will run away again?”

Loki is silent for a long time. Thor gives into the urge and turns to stare at his brother. Too thin and gaunt, like he’s part phantom. Perhaps some part of his deaths linger, chipping away at his soul until nothing remains. Loki has long ago mastered the art of keeping a blank face, but this one is too blank, as if Loki is already gone and just left his body behind.

“Do you remember,” Loki finally says, voice thin. “We were 700 or so years old, when you snuck out to get Mjolnir from the dwarves because you just had too, and had absolutely nothing to trade for it.”

“I do. You saved me that time,” Thor says fondly. “It was your plan we followed to get into their rooms. You made me wear a dress and tried to marry me off to one of the dwarves. They found our plan so hilariously convoluted that they gave me my hammer as a gift.”

It’s a sweet memory now when it had been terrifying when he was a child. They often let their ideas get ahead of them.

“I don’t,” Loki says quietly. “I know it happened but the memory is gone. Only words are left. Like it was just a story told to me. It feels as if I was never there.”

“Brother…”

“I think back on all those years on Asgard and it feels like I was never there. Like I was just a phantom listening to stories that happened to a completely different person.” Loki turns to him. Thor sees the madness in his eyes, a wildness that cannot be tamed, cannot be cured.

“Do you understand what I’m trying to say?” Loki asks.

Thor swallows. “You’ll always be my brother.”

Loki pursues his lips. “Perhaps.” He clearly doesn’t believe Thor. Thor grabs his shoulder, grips it tight, resists the urge to shake it.

“It is true,” he says. “What do I have to do to prove it to you?”

Loki’s eyes fall to the ground. “Has it occured to you, brother, that this is not something you can fix?” The words are said gently, more gently than Thor’s ever heard his brother sound, but they still sting.

“This is my burden, brother,” Loki says. “My problem to fix.”

Thor wants to argue, wants to tell Loki that he isn’t alone, but no. His brother would never accept that. Is too proud for that.

“I can’t get you to stay, can I?” he asks wearily.

“I will come back,” Loki lies. “Probably.”

Thor laughs, despite himself. He doubts it sounds very happy.

“I will,” Loki says again. It sounds more real this time, honest in its uncertainty.

Thor closes his eyes. He thinks he should do something, but there’s nothing to be done. Perhaps it’s time he learned to accept that.

“I trust you, brother,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm acediscowlng on tumblr! 
> 
> As always, your comments sustains my soul <3


End file.
